Page 71 of Take Your Breath Away

After all, he was the last person, so far as Hardy knew, to have seen Brie alive (not counting our FaceTime chat on that Saturday evening). He’d been in the house with her. He knew her husband was away for the weekend on a fishing trip. If he’d returned that night, he’d have had every reason to believe Brie would be alone. And, as I had related to Hardy at the time, Brie had found him to be a pretty odd character.

If I’d been Hardy, I’d have been looking at him very closely.

I was up before Jayne. She mumbled into her pillow that she’d had a terrible night of tossing and turning, so I told her to stay in bed and see if she could go back to sleep. I quickly gathered what clothes I needed, slipped out of the room, and closed the door. I showered, shaved, and dressed, and was down in the kitchen by half-past eight.

I was surprised to see Tyler there.

He was sitting at the kitchen table in a pair of boxers. Tyler wasn’t big on bathrobes. He hadn’t made coffee, but there was half a glass of orange juice in front of him and a bowl with the dregs of some soggy cereal. He was looking at his phone when I walked in.

“Hey,” I said. “You’re up early.”

He looked up, shrugged. “I guess.”

“You working today?”

He nodded. “I start at ten.”

“You want a lift or anything?” I asked as I went over to the coffee machine.

“That’s okay.”

I had my back to him, running some water from the tap into the carafe, when he said, “Need to ask you something.”

“Sure.”

“Did you kill your wife?”

I froze a moment before slowly turning around to look at him. I supposed I shouldn’t have been surprised the secret was out, although I wondered who’d brought Jayne’s brother up to speed. Maybe it had been Jayne herself.

“Your sister talked to you,” I said.

Tyler shook his head. “Nope. I just listened. Yesterday, when that detective was here. And later, when you came home. You can hear everything from my room.” He pointed to the ceiling briefly.

I felt my face flush. The little shit had been eavesdropping.

“Well,” I said. “That’s a good thing to know, if a bit late.”

“So you haven’t answered my question. I don’t think my sister actually asked you flat-out, unless I missed that part.”

I pulled out a chair and sat across from him.

“No,” I said.

Tyler poked his tongue into his cheek as he thought about my answer. “But if you did kill your wife, that’s what you’d say anyway.”

“Then you have to wonder if there’s any point in asking,” I said.

“I read everything about Brie online,” he said. “Six years. Man. That’s a long time to go without the police figuring out what happened.”

“Long time for me, too,” I said.

“I just want what’s best for my sister.”

“Same here.”

“Especially now that you’ve, you know, got her pregnant and everything.”

“I agree.”